take my hand
by EscapismReigns
Summary: In that moment, everything hangs in the balance. She has two choices laid out in front of her, two possibilities, two futures. She chooses a third. Reylo AU minus a certain death. Spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker. .


**take my hand**

**In that moment, everything hangs in the balance. She has two choices laid out in front of her, two possibilities, two futures. **

**She chooses a third.**

* * *

Cut him down in anger, in hate, and save the people that she loves. It is so easy to imagine. She'll see Finn and Poe. She'll see Ben. She can finally be free...

...as a Sith.

Maybe in another place, another time, Ben Solo reaches her before she can decide. But not today.

Rey regards this thing that is her grandfather not with any discernible type of emotion. She just sees her end goal, and she knows what needs to be done.

In that moment, everything hangs in the balance.

Ghosts of the Sith chant in unison as she draws her saber back, and Palpatine grins through his putrid, rotting teeth. "Do it. Fulfil your destiny!" He hisses the words with such strength that spittle flies across the room; its remains dripping down his chin.

If she does this, she loses herself. She knows she will become as bad as Kylo Ren and Darth Vader. Worse, even. She will be a Palpatine. But if she doesn't kill Darth Sidious, then it was all for nothing. The Resistance dies here; her friends and family die here.

Rey takes a breath, and strikes.

The saber shears him through the shoulder downwards into his torso, a sickening sizzle of burning flesh reaching her ears and assaulting her nose. He doesn't wince – doesn't even flinch. Of course he doesn't Rey sneers. That _thing_ is no longer human.

The chanting halts, the silence screaming through the void, broken then by the sound of Palpatine's slow, vile laughter. "You've done it, you foolish little girl."

He collapses, floundering on the floor. Palpatine's breathing becomes shallow, before finally ceasing altogether.

It's then that the pain comes.

It feels like nothing she's ever experienced before, pure agony tearing through her body, her mind, her spirit. The attack comes from all sides, and her legs fail her. On the floor she retches, clutching her waist as if it will change a thing.

All Rey can think is that this tide of unbelievable, pure malice rising from within will consume her. She can see their faces spread out in a line, generation upon generation, each forsaking everything to gain absolute power. And she will be their avatar, their champion.

Their weapon.

And above them all, she hears Palpatine's laughter. All she can do is accept it. This is the end.

Rey thought she had two choices laid out in front of her, two possibilities, two futures. Sith or Jedi. Jedi or Sith.

But in that moment, Rey chooses a third.

"_Be with me be with me be with me._" Every fibre of her being she weaves into this prayer. She needs them now more than she ever has. For an instant she believes they have abandoned her, that she is truly alone.

But only for an instant.

A cacophony of voices rise up, a mountain of will just as strong as the Sith. She can hear Luke and Leia and so many more. Names and faces she inexplicably knows, unanimous in their support for her, their pride in her.

Then they go still. It is as if the voices of the Jedi and Sith were a swift river, and she were suddenly drifting across it in freely and calmly in a raft.

The enormity of it staggers her. In this single moment she has achieved what no other has before. She bears host to the knowledge and legacy of two opposing ways of life, as ancient as they are powerful. By rights she should be dead, torn asunder.

But she isn't. Within her there is only balance.

Rey waits for a few moments before shifting, and sighs with relief. She is no longer in pain. She pulls herself up one limb at a time, hobbling to her feet as if she were two-hundred instead of twenty.

With every inch of her aching, she looks around. The crowds in the stands, whatever they were – mortal or some sort of Sith nightmare made reality – they are gone. So too is Palpatine's body. All that is left is this strange place, with its pulsing lights and foundations of cracked, midnight rock.

And the Throne. It is still there. Rey can still feel the dread emanating from it, a presence that is almost sentient. But it isn't hostile. It welcomes her, beckons her forward to take her rightful place –

"Rey!"

She whips around to find Ben staggering through the entry way towards her, holding a wound on his thigh. He's still wearing black, so she can't tell how bad it is. But she can feel it. He's weakening quickly.

"How...?" The question refuses to come out of her mouth.

"Please," he begs, conflict warring across his face. "Please tell me you didn't give in."

She tests out the idea in her head, and rejects it. She is not Sith.

But she is not Jedi either.

Rey steps forward, and with each step she takes Ben's pain lessens – she can sense it. His eyes are a little less dull, his cheeks a little more flushed. By the time she takes his hand, his wound is fully healed.

Ben stares at her dumbly, all of a sudden the one confused. She captures his gaze with hers, and what she says next she can't quite explain, and it is a knowledge that comes from a place that she can't describe, but can feel to her very bones

"No, not Jedi _or_ Sith. Only me. I am the last, and I am the first. The Force is in all things and I am the Force."

He is still staring at her as if she has grown another head, and who knows, maybe she has. Wouldn't be the strangest thing that has happened to her today. In his mind, she can hear an answering whisper: _Flowing through all, there is balance_.

Odd. "Say something, Ben."

He blinks, and with a shake of his head seemingly comes back to the present. He steps closer to her, so that they are almost chest to chest. "We're going to talk about this later, Rey, but first I really need to get the kriffing hells out of here."

For the first time today, Rey can wholeheartedly agree with something.

* * *

Months pass. While the rest of the galaxy still celebrate, Rey buries the Skywalker lightsabers in the Tattooine desert.

She feels a presence come up behind her, slipping a hand through hers. "It's the right thing, you know," Ben murmurs. "They came into this world together, and now their legacies are here together, too."

Rey huffs at him. "Their legacies are a lot more than two lightsabers. _We're_ their legacies too, Ben."

"I know, that's what I said," he smirks at her. "Are you even listening to me?"

Rey scowls at him, but is caught off guard when his smirk turns into a grin, seeming nonchalant and without a care in the world.

She knows he is dealing with the consequences of his actions, and will be for a long time, for the innocents he massacred and the lives he destroyed. Force knows Rey still has her moments when she wakes up terrified and confused, convinced the person in her bed is there to capture and torture her.

It is a stain that can never come clean, that _should_ never come clean, even with the knowledge that it was Palpatine that led him to it. Ben still has a long road ahead, but Rey is determined to walk it with him.

"I haven't seen people here in so long." A strange voice interrupts them. "Who are you?"

Rey senses Ben's annoyance with the intruder, and she gives a small laugh and pats him on the hand. "I'm Rey, and this is Ben Solo," she calls.

The odd woman seems stumped. "Rey who?"

Rey opens her mouth to answer when she feels Ben nudge her, and she follows his line of sight and inhales sharply.

Leia and Luke are standing there, tall and full of approval and joy. They now appear to her sometimes when she needs them most, but she relishes every single moment as if it were the last.

Past Sith also make the occasional unwelcome appearance, but that is another story entirely and an irritating and melodramatic one at that.

But behind Luke and Leia is another man that Rey vaguely recognises. It was one of the Jedi who saved her.

_My grandfather_, Ben explains through the bond. She can feel his happiness, his surety that he is following a path that has been trod before. He is truly Anakin Skywalker's grandson.

This is his family, and it's hers. She doesn't need the name Palpatine, because she's had a family name all along.

Rey turns back to the woman and finally answers her, "My name is Rey Skywalker."

"Sounds familiar," the woman grumbles, squinting at her and tapping a finger against her chin.

Rey waits.

"Ah, I got it!" The woman cries with glee. "You two must be city-slickers from Anchorhead or Mos Espa, eh? Take care about, I heard the Sand People reckon there are bad ghosts in these parts," she says smugly as a final note, and wanders back to her speeder, soon gone from sight.

"If only she knew," Ben mutters darkly, and snorts. Rey doesn't pretend to understand half the things Ben is muttering on this trip out to Luke's childhood home, but then Rey doesn't pretend to understand most of the things that comes out of Ben's mouth.

Rey reaches up on her toes and kisses him at the corner of his lips. "We should go back to the Falcon; they're all waiting for us."

He smiles. "You say that as if they won't be three-quarters on the way to being drunk by the time we get there. Chewie will have been accused of cheating at least twice, I'm sure of it."

"Well what are you doing standing around, we have catching up to do." Rey grins and feels a thrill chase down her body when his dark eyes light up in amusement. They head back to their speeders, the twin Tattooine suns chasing each other into the mountainous horizon and BB8 chirping animatedly behind them.

Once upon a time she never would have believed she could have smiled so wide, love and be loved so deeply and completely. Now she has it all, a wealth beyond measure for a scavenger of Jakku.

_How much things have changed_.

Rey knows she, and now Ben, are not the first ones in history to stand balanced in the Force, and they certainly won't be the last. After all, the Force is in all things.

But for at this moment, the galaxy is at peace. And Rey for one intends to make the most of it.

* * *

**A/N: Here is my offering of cheese. I'm currently using it to sooth the hole in my heart after Rise of Skywalker. Reylo may have been my problematic guilty-pleasure ship, but it was canon for about five milliseconds and you can pry that out of my cold, dead fingers.**

**P.S. The dialogue and sequences etc. won't be word-for-word, simply because I have a shite memory. **


End file.
